Week.... I Feel Week 17.... Beans, Beans, The Magical Fruit, The More You Eat The More You....

This post is dedicated to a plant, unlike the Monsterea Deliciosa, which has kept me alive since the start of the year: the humble bean.

Please pay particular attention to this manifold description. There are the small. slender lithe looking beans on the left. These are what we eat raw, stir fried etc. The other beans you can see are the romanticallly named Berlotti beans (the green with red striped ones on the left), and the aptly titled Purple Kings on the right. Both of the Berlotti and Purple Kings are examples of beans that are passed the slender and tender phase and have entered the tough as old nails phase. These will be shelled and the individual beans inside the pods will be used for dahl. Note the corn, Cucumber and chilli that will also go into the dahl.

The individual, shelled beans. Boil and blend or perhaps stirfry. 

There are lots of other great things about beans in the garden. As we all know, beans, along with lentils, peas and the like are legumes which have the nifty ability to put the element NItrogen back into the soil. NItrates are responsible for green leafy growth in plants and can also be found in comfrey tea, cowpoo and urine (people and animal). Growing beans is one way of producing food from the garden while putting something into the soil.


The other cool thing about beans is that you can grow them in among other plants that also produce fruit. I have tried growing them on corn plants and sunflowers with success. I have found though that the beans can fruit a bit late, well after the corn is done and when you might want to plant something else. In the future I think that they will be the first seedlings in the patch so that hey can get a head start.


Here of course is the weigh in:

I'm hoping that I can crack the 84 kg barrier soon so that I can get some rice into me. Lingering on the cusp is making me salivate!


Until then chaps and chapettes, toodles,

Showing Rib

Week 13 - Shaping Up For Winter

Hi all,


Lots of people have asked what in Rudolf's name I'm going to eat over the winter. Perhaps they think that we are living deep in the southern hemisphere: where Autumn reigns; where all the leaves turn golden brown and fall from the trees, where furry little animals become torpid as a thick layer of snow covers the ground. Perform your rituals, stock the cords of firewood, harvest the grains and hunker down in front of the stove for a long dark winter of eggnog and scrabble.


Pifflecock I say! This is the subtropics!


Let's be Frank, if he doesn't mind. There is no snow. There is not even any frost. We have tonnes of firewood stashed away in the leanto but this is for the barbie that probably won't get too much use over the colder periods.Very few of the trees are dropping any leaves at all and there are many that are experiencing lush new growth. This is true of the vegetables down in the front garden too. If any of you have been in the sun in Brisbane lately, there is still enough bite in it to burn skin, as well as promote healthy leaf growth. As far as furry little creatures go, I must say the bandicoot is less conspicuous in his trashing of my seedlings as he noses around looking for worms. Maybe he is hibernating. That'd be nice.

As an aside, do you know you aren't allowed to kill these little critters, even to eat, because the are native and therefore protected. Same goes for Bush Turkeys. I can kind of appreciate why, but have you ever had a whole bed of seedlings ripped asunder the day after you've busted various parts of your body planting them? In my dreams I have happily watched their little eyes bulge as I wrapped my hands around their scrawny little.....

As I mentioned earlier we have no frost here at Lofty Meadows so there will be no damage to any crops we try to grow over winter, at the worst just sluggish growth. Much of this can be mitigated with some attention to the creation of microclimates. You can do this by creating shady areas with larger leafy plants such as Citronella, Amaranth, or Corn in the hot months for shade loving plants such as Ceylon Spinach or herbs. You can also do the inverse in winter most easily by preventing shade from the previously mentioned plants, or by positioning rocks that trap and store heat or by creating mini greenhouses using plastic, Alsonite or if you're super keen, glass. All we do here at Lofty is to make sure there is plenty of sun able to get in. We are lucky to have a sloping site that faces the north east which catches sun all year around.


I have mentioned in previous posts that there is a certain mystery maintained by "real" gardeners as to how things are grown and when the best time to grow things is. This too, for me, is pifflecock. Sure, use the seasonal guides for your area, but don't listen to any nay sayers. Try things for yourself and you might be surprised by what grows at a particular time, in your particular area, with your particular microclimate. This is especially true the tropics and subtropics.


"Yes, yes. But what are you going to eat over winter you verbose blogmeister?" you mutter, impatiently tapping your finger and glancing at your left wrist where your non existent watch is telling you it is half past waffletime.


O.K. Check it.


I have been planting bulk (hundreds) of cabbage and broccoli seedlings around the garden. The garlic is in the ground; big fat Russian Garlic. I bought a kilo from our local organic shop "Four Seasons". I heard once the wisdom was that you plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest, but I am trying something different this year.

Hundreds of Cabbage and Brocolli Seedlings in part of our seedling beds. The Brocolli are in the back half. You have to tilt your head 90 degrees to the right to get the correct orientation.



Aren't they Gorgeous? The same seedlings planted out into beds and "tucked in" with their little blankies of mulch. "There, there you little darlin's"

The amaranth is still growing, both grain and leaf. We have also been planting lots of beans and will be moving into other legumes that favour the cold such as peas and broad beans. Now that it is drying out a little  I hope that the greeens such as silverbeeet etc. will stop disolving into the ground. The Eggplants are absolutely laden with flowers and baby fruit. It is difficult to wait until they put on weight.

 

The plant on the left is leaf Amaranth that came up everywhere in our garden after I made the fortuitous mistake of putting a seeded plant into the compost heap. As the heap was spread, so too the seeds and now it comes up as a very welcome weed. This is a great way to garden and mant of our plants are propagated in this way. The plant on the right is grain amaranth which can be used as a cereal or flour if ground. It spreads in the same way.





Good old fashion climbing beans - Purple Kings produce very well and also tend to come up like weeds all over the garden if you broad cast the dried out, shrivelled up seeds that you missed on the first harvest.



A few random Solanacae for you. Note the tasty looking red chilli for you bottom right. All the other ones are in the dehydrator.

We are going to keep trying corn, potatoes and tomatoes as long as they keep fruiting. The last batch of corn that we have in is popping corn. Like the Russian garlic we bought some from the health food shop and popped it in the ground (pardon the pun) and away it grew. Organic, biodynamic Lofty Meadows popcorn - can't you just taste the carbs. 

We are trying to keep the chooks full of high protein food (we are setting up a worm farm for this purpose) to keep them laying over the long dark winter. According to Ness' research that is all they need. I thought it might have something to do with giving their cloacas a bit of a rest, but if it is just a matter of their diet I was thinking of dropping by the Gym and picking up some "Beefcake 5000 Whey Powder" and mixing them some high protein shakes to wrap their little beaks around.

The Muscovy ducks....

 ...and the girls, munging out on on some not so high protein food - grain. Note Rocky the rooster bottom right. He is a very handsome Barnvelder rooster I'm sure you'll agree.

Breaking news! You can do all sorts of crazy things with cucumbers! I know what you are thinking. Sure, you can chop it and pop it into a salad, or grate it into some yoghurt as Tzatssiki, but is there much else?
Let me tell you:

1. Perhaps not so ground breaking - munch on them like a banana.
2. Pickle them of course with some water, white wine vinegar and mustard seed. Fantastic on oily roast pumpkin.
3. Grate them and fry with grated pumpkin, chopped greens and mix with egg to make a delicious Frittata. 
4. Cut into "cubes" and roast. I kid you not! Very similar to roast eggplant.
5. Slice and fry in the frypan to eat by themselves. This works for the pickled ones too.

When your cucumbers are producing you find ways of eating them.


Congratulations to Russ from the "Turkey's Nest" up at Mount Glorious who won the Inaugural Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine competition with his answer to the cryptic question - "Sit on it but don't stand in it."


The answer of course - A stool.

Anyway if you are reading this in the tropics or subtropics I hope that this post has helped you to reclaim Autumn. Make your new Autumn colour the pale redish green growth of a fresh Eucalyptus leaf. Don't be like a furry little animal, get out and about in this most beautiful of weather.

And now for the weigh in:

Same as last week! Getting close to the magic eighty-four kilos where I can start supplementing with some rice.

Till next time, toodles,

Showing Rib

Week .... Aww, Gee, I Don't Know... Week 15? - What in Rudolf's Name is a Monstera Deliciosa?

Hello fellow Ribbers (or is that "Showers"?),


I suspect that many of you are harbouring a food source that most of you may be unaware of. There is a ubiquitous house plant, commonly found luring hapless fools who frequent Bunnings and other nursery establishments with its wide, slitted, dark green leaves into buying them and neglecting them in their bath or bed rooms.


Yes, I admit that I too was one of those fools. I speak now from experience. When living as a lonesome bachelor, studying during the day and by night existing in a ponderously hazy state as a musician, I used to have a pet plant.  I didn't get her from Bunnings but ripped a bit of someone's fence on a late night stroll home. I stuck it in a pot and asked my lovely daughter Ruby, who couldn't have been much more than four years old at the time what I should call it. She replied "Planty". Obvious really.


And so it was. The withered green thing stuck in a black plastic 200mm pot filled with dirt from the backyard in the corner of my perpetually twilight bedroom was dubbed Planty. 


The good thing about this pet was how incredibly hardy it was. It managed to survive on the monthly water it got when I was spurned into a fit of dish and clothes washing, house cleaning and plant watering by a visit from my family. Hardly any water, no fertiliser, very little sun and not so much as a wet cloth or even a dusting in eighteen months. I wouldn't say she thrived but survived.


However, things looked up for Planty. As I moved, so did she. She moved in with Nessie at Mount Glorious for six months and enjoyed the cool climate and moist air; she moved to the Gap and was there in the corner of the lounge room when Toby was born; and eventually, when we finally made the shift to good old "Lofty Meadows", she went into fertile ground, under the cubby house. She certainly hasn't looked back. Cop a load of the size of her now!

A familiar looking plant to most....

The other thing that is great about Planty, or Monstera Deliciosa as the boffins would have us call her is that she fruits! You don't often see this in unwatered specimens stuck 200 mm black pots filled with backyard clay and stone placed in the corner of a perpetually twilight room. But given free range for their roots and some fertile and moist soil they produce quite heavily as you can see.

Is that a Monstera Deliciosa in your pocket or are you just....

This is what it looks like as it ripens in front of a jar of lemongrass tea... Note how the little hexagon like cells on the left hand side have lifted to reveal the soft flesh underneath.

This is what I look like as I set my ravenous fangs upon it!

It ripens sequentially from one end over the period of a week. The flesh has the consistency of a custard apple, if you have tried one of those. It tastes like .... well... Monstera Deliciosa. Some people call it the "Fruit Salad Plant", which I think is a cop out name that people use to describe any fruit with a more complex palette than a banana. It is shot through with little black "spines" that the flesh clings to and these prickly little bits can get stuck down the back of your throat. It is the same sensation that sometimes happens when someone has done a bodgy job of cutting a fresh pineapple.


It is a very peculiar fruit which some have said is poisonous! Arrggh! I hope not because I have scarfed quite a few now.  Maybe that's why there is blood in my stools! Just kidding! (Bit of a clue for the Inaugural Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine Competition from a few posts ago).


I wouldn't say it has been a staple in my diet, but if there is food lying about the place I feel compelled to eat it.


Here's the weigh in:

Remember, spread the Showing Rib word and till next time, toodles.

Showing Rib

Week... (hang on a second, I'll check the calendar)..... Week 12 - Fetch the Frontline; The Dog Is Itching

Once again sorry about the lack of posts through May, I wouldn't make a very good fence would I? I'm back on the Pony now though so look out!

So here we go, I think that I'm about to have a bit of a rant!

Our modern western way of producing food is parasitic. 

If you consider that the land we live on is an organism, and then consider how we grow and harvest the food that grows as part of this organism's life, it is plain to see that we are in a parasitic relationship. 

"Wha? A parasite?" I hear you ask, "Like a tick? A flea? A nit? Like a vampire or tapeworm or on of children? Surely not! This is an affront to our status as the top shelf mammal on this planet!" you snort indiganantly.

And well may you be indignant wealthy westerner. You work hard. You're no sponge. But perhaps you'll consider the following definition:

Parasite: Noun.  An organism that lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host's expense.

Sound familiar? I think that the key word here is nutrient. We can't keep drawing nutrient for our own requirements i.e. filling our own bellies, without depelting our host i.e. the earth (or sea for that matter) from which we get our food.The pastoralists and farmers among us may object by saying that we add nutrients back to the soil while we crop. Haven't I heard of Urea? Dynamic Lifter? Super Phosphate? All of these are bought at great expense and added broadscale to the land to ensure next years crop is a success.

Well yes, but I propose that these chemicals are not much more than the equivalent of giving a couple of cans of "Red Bull" to a tired toddler. They are guaranteed to get a response, to keep things moving, but are they sustainable? Long term, are we going to wear the little tike out?

"Sure," you might say, "That's the same old, boring, predictably green, sustainability pushing, farmer bashing argument. Steady on with the emotive "We're all poisoning the children" metaphor eh Dave?" 

Yes you're right, it's not our child, she's our mother.

Maybe you have a problem with the concept of the earth being an organism in itself, especially your mother! But think of it: Just like we are made up of a gazzilion of our own individual cells, as well as ten times as many bacteria and other greeblies living in, on and around us, the earth too is a collection of different organisms, energy cycles and mineral structures working together in what could be seen as a functionaing whole. Whether or not it has a personilty, or a wardrobe as charming as your mother's is a matter of debate of course.

There was, or still is I'm pretty sure, a scientist type guy named James Lovelock who proposed that the whole earth is a being in itself. He didn't postulate a consciousness to go with this being, but definitely that it was an entity of its own. Incidentally, he considered humans  as the reproductive organs of this being he called Gaia, in that we are moving towards colonising other planets, taking part of our biosphere with us. If you want to know more on the Gaia Hypothesis, here is the the link to the delphic like Wikipedia that has an article and lots of links to further information.

But back to my outrageous claims of a parasitic humanity. As you might expect, I feel that this is not an accurate description of what I'm up too with my "Showing Rib" project. What I am aiming for with this lifestyle is a symbiotic relationship. Perhaps if you consider the following definition:

symbiosis  

1. Biology A close, prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may, but does not necessarily, benefit each member.

which doesn't illustrate my point as well as 

2. A relationship of mutual benefit or dependence.

That's right. Lofty Meadows is like my own little pony that I am riding into the sunset. I feed him and he carries me. Symbiosis. It is important to keep my steed healthy and happy so she can carry me onward. But how to do this? How to keep a healthy horse trotting along?

"Um..." you loudly think, "Er...". You look away in an embarassed attempt at avoiding eye contact "He is ranting, isn't he?"

It's all about inputs and outputs really. As I said  earlier, you can't keep pulling stuff out of a closed system, like "Lofty Meadows" and expect it to keep supporting you. So even though Nessie and I aren't buying in any nutrient from our local IGA for ourselves (excepting some garlic salt, soy sauce and Olive oil), there arer still inputs coming in to our "closed" system.

Of course the first and foremost input is the Sun, as it is everywhere. The second common input which is the raw material for all of the starches and sugars that we eat is often totally overlooked, mostly because it is invisible - Carbon Dioxide. It is responsible for all of the cellulose that we feed to ourselves and back to the chooks, compost and worms, making humus to literally feed the microorganisms in the soil and to act as a sponge for any moisture.

What other more obvious inputs are there? There is a petrol input to cut the lawn clippings to feed to the chooks who mix it with their poo. Wwoofer energy also from the food from the garden and IGA. There is cow and horse poo input when we build a compost heap. Last of all there is chook food. The big idea is that we try to catch as much of this energy input and keep it inside the closed loop that is Lofty Meadows. I'd like to focus on the last one: Chook food .

Once the energy from the chook food has been turned into eggs, poo and chicken, we try to keep it here on the meadow by eating their eggs, putting their poo into the garden via the compost heap and the chicken into our bellies. Well, the roosters anyway. As the fowl are going about their chickeny business they also use the energy from the chook food to physically turn the weeds over, effectively composting them. Once their poo is on the weeds in their pen we gather them up and compost them and they are returned to the garden around the plants. So you can see that the chook food has been turned into eggs, chicken meat, a compost tumbler, and plant food. 


The vegetables and fruit we grow are eaten by us but are also returned to the chooks in the form of scraps. This is a saving grace because it would be very difficult to watch most of Toby's delicious leftover lasagna slide off his plate into the bin! If is going back into the chooks I can resist the urge to scarf it myself, in the interests of preventing wastage of course.


From the garden we also feedback to the chooks worms, weeds or even specially grown chook crops such as sunflowers or amaranth. Each of these smaller "vegetable loops" in the whole "Lofty Meadows" cycle, beefs up the substance of the meadow as it pulls energy and CO2 from the atmosphere. 


It is important to see that there is a great deal of work to be done on our behalf to provide this relationship of mutual benefit or dependence. We have to feed the soil if it is to feed us. This is done primarily through harnesssing the two most prevalent and cheap inputs - sunlight and CO2.

So what do we pull out of the ground? Well the obvious one is chook and Duck eggs, as well as their meat on occasion. The other is vegetable matter such as fruit and vegetables and perhaps wood for the barbie.


We are lucky that our main output, our excreta, that would otherwise go out to sea to sleep with the fishes, stays onsite. The solids settle out in a tank while most of the nutrient rich water coming out of our Aqua Nova is distributed onto our banana patch and fruit trees, which of course we end up eating.


This reminds me of a very clever cryptic joke that one of my students made up.


Sit on it, but don't stand in it. (Five letters)


First correct answer receives a signed copy of the Inaugural Compendium of Lofty Meadows Cuisine. Stay tuned for even more new exciting recipes!


O.K. I think I've finished ranting. Thanks for indulging me. I'll try something lighthearted next week.


Check the scales! I need more input!

Toodles,

Showing Rib

Week ? - This Diet Of Mine Has Brought Me Out In Hives

Not that it is a diet. Everyone speaks of it as a diet, including myself, but that is not what I had in mind when I began this project. I was thinking more of a lifestyle challenge along the lines of Morgan Spurlock's "Supersize Me", 'cept not as poisonous or expensive. Perhaps something more ascetic, like Susan Maushart's "The Winter of Our Disconnect" 'cept without the whinging kids. OK with the whinging kids. You know what I mean. I suppose the fact that I'm losing weight quickly makes it a "diet" though I think that that has more to do with my previous patterns of consumption rather than my current way of eating. I believe that this regime will bring me to my "correct" weight, if there is such a thing.


But on to the hives. In this post's title I am, of course, making an exceedingly lame pun and am not breaking out in a rash.  My low blood sugar levels have prompted me to pursue something that has always seemed slightly esoteric to me for some reason - The white art of Bee Keeping. 


I have been spurred on to this simply by seeing other people, who appear to be quite normal  folk, and who I'm sure won't mind me saying, don't have any special training or skills or perhaps even intelligence; people without any pretensions as to their expertise, but who are, on the contrary, rather encouraging in respect to any ambitions your friendly scribe has  concerning the keeping of the bee. So thanks Jason, Hans and all the other friendly apiarists inhabiting the online environs. 


The hive that has taken my fancy is known as the Top Bar Hive, Specifically the Kenyan Top Bar Hive. I have bought a sheet of ply to make my hive as per some plans I have found. Shall I give you a step by step account of my efforts? O.K. Here I go then....


Before I start I should mention why I have chosen to build these fancy top bar hives instead of the good old fashioned Langstroth boxes, that I'm sure you are imagining when I mention the word beehive. These are used by professional bee keepers and are primarily about massive honey production. Someone labelled it "battery bee keeping". It is precisely because the top bar hives are in fact more simple, easier to harvest, are less prone to disease and have a far funkier name than the ol' Langstroth box that we chose to go with them. Langstroth - sounds like I should be fox hunting, not bee keeping. Anyway, to the manufacturing of the hives.

First, collect your tools and, glue and screws 

This is the upside down hive so far. The two side boards are resting on the followers (which can slide along inside the hive to adjust it's size) 

The hive the right way up now. Toby and all of the topbars lined up along the hive. Each of the bars has had a groove or kerf cut down the middle of them which is then filled with molten wax. This gives the bees  something to build their comb from.

"So where do the bees come from Dave? The Bee Shack? Apiarists 'R'Us? Super BMart? Pick some up in the drive thru of KFBees?" I hear you ask in your usual silly fashion.

"Well, no" is my reply. "A very generous friend named Jason (owner and chief apiarist down at Crazy Jas' House of Bees) gave me four bars of brood and honey comb, along with the attached bees of course from one of his Kenyan Top Bar hives." Brood comb is different to the honey comb in that the cells are filled with bee larva (kind of like little volcanoes) instead of honey. 

Some of the sharper pencils in the jar may be pondering the lack of a leader. As they are aware, a hive needs a queen bee to make further bee babies and so, thanks to the DPI we found a grumpy old bastard in Bray Park who would sell us a royal wench for the princely sum of $20. BIt of a bargain I reckon. She comes in a little cage which you wedge in between the combs. The cage is plugged at one end by something known as queen candy (It is begging for it but I will resist commenting on this in order to keep the whole thing G Rated) and over the few days it takes for the bees to consume this and free her she intoxicates her new minions with her irresistible pheromones (Maybe thats why Elizabeth II can still pull a crowd). When she is out and doin' it bee style with her drones, the hive is established and the rest is just a matter of population.

Though the gruff old coot assured us that we wouldn't have any luck establishing a hive "heading into winter" we ignored him. We were of the opinion that he was Langstroth man and could safely be told where to stick his smoker. Jason concurred with our headstrong insistence on getting the meadows buzzin' and so we assembled our hive anyway and put it in position. In summary: Bars, Bees, Brood, Bloody Big Box, Banana Patch.

The hive in situ down in the Banana Patch

We won't harvest any honey over winter as they like to have a bit put away for the cold. In spring we'll check to see if there is any loot. About 25% is a good amount to take per raid.

One of our first tenants. I called him Aldrin, after the astronaut.

I have a feeling I could write a lot more on this topic but I also feel I need my rest. I would like to talk about getting amongst the bees and how I plan to be so attuned to the vibe of the the thing that I will be able to check the hive without a veil or gloves - naked in fact. I'll post some photos.

I'm really sorry about the lack of posts lately. I'm on it! Just going to have to start burning the candle at both ends again.

Oh, check the scales!

Still declining but more slowly. I actually weigh less than this but had just had dinner and a few glass of lemongrass tea. I have decided to start supplementing my diet with brown rice when I reach 84 kgs. I will have lost a quarter of my original weight at that point - 28 kgs.

Till then, toodles.

Showing Rib